yrg thread

[warza]

I had a G10 that did pretty well but you had to pick it really hard.

(/quote]

I've had a GI-10 for years, since they first came out. A couple of months ago my keyboard (which was the main controller for my studio), went up in a puff of smoke. AGGGGHH! What to do? Funds are very tight right now.... Well, it's amazing sometimes how limitations can force you into something better.

It turns out that my precious Roland keyboard blowing up was one of the best musical things to happen to me. I got the GI-10 back out, dusted it off and spent quite some time setting it up just so on my Warmoth Strat (the neck on that thing is to die for, one of the best investments I ever made). I have to say, the Roland GI-10 pitch to MIDI system FLIES when it's set up perfectly!

This is just me, but I don't expect it to be a "live" instrument. There's always going to be a few lag or glitch issues, but they are surprisingly small and few. They are also surprisingly quick to clean up in Cubases' editing view.

I love this thing now. I have a very fast and responsive MIDI controller that works with my favorite guitar. Not enough can be said for "feel" while you are playing, and I wouldn't trade my Warmoth for any other guitar.

Basically, with my "new" (10 year old), system, I can't stop playing it now every spare second I have. The secret for me was mostly getting the pickup to sit so close to the strings that it's a fraction away from touching them. I leave it set in "Fingerpicking" mode even when I'm using a pick. It almost NEVER misses a note now - it feels almost like it is breathing with the guitar. I still can't believe the amount of engineering that Roland put into this device...

The second thing that made it work for me was changing my approach. It is NEVER going to be a guitar type instrument that plays screaming bendy rock licks. Think about it, how many people play keyboards that rely on BENDING for every other note? It does follow bends very accurately, but for musical reasons, with most playing I use it for discrete pitch steps only.

Also, what made a huge difference was having the guitar plugged into an amp (clean) while I am sequencing. I just play to the click, with the MIDI tracking very low in the background. What a difference! This has forced me to analyze and clean up my playing further. 98% of the glitches have turned out to be user error.

When you can play every note PRECISELY using the the amp and the click, you get a very accurate track that keeps the feel. This also get's rid of any lag that may be throwing you off.

You also need to study how other instruments are approached. Try playing and voicing like a flute or a piano, instead of the guitar phrases you would normally play. Anyways, before I ramble on any further - the combination of my pitch to MIDI guitar WITH the tools in Cubase have allowed me to play stuff with electronic instruments I could only dream about in my head before. You just have to get used to a process that requires a little thinking ahead and a little cleaning up with what you played AFTER THE FACT. Pianos, synths, they are all mine now. It just took more work to get there, but now chords, voicing and scales are available to me second nature from brain to string.

I'm really happy with this system, even inspite of the occasional frustrations. Losing my keyboard and being forced to adapt to MIDI guitar (I'm not really a keyboard player anyway) has changed the way I can compose by about a million percent.

I've also noticed that sometimes less is more with electronic instruments. Playing busy and fast sometimes just sounds like clutter when you have a huge harmonic spectrum to push around. Simplified chords and melodies sometimes just sound a lot better, than if you heard them played on a guitar.

Having owned a Beetle Quantar in the past (it fell apart....)what I am salivating for now is that Fret-X system. Please God, let them get this to market before the technology disappears again...

[warza]

Just to prevent any confusion here for people that may not be familiar:
The GI-10 is the Roland pitch to MIDI system that uses a hex pickup on a real guitar.

The G10 was the product made by Yamaha that was a dedicated controller that used sonar impulses to scan it's integrated all G strings, instead of pitch.

Completely different systems.

[annode]

Good post warza. very encouraging for me.
I own the GI-10 and later the GI-20.
Bought the 5 pole bass pickup when I got the 20.(reads bass notes..or some of them)
One thing about the Roland systems I struggled with was how it had two different output levels depending whether you picked the string up or down.
I'm using the same guitar and pickup from the beginning when I bought the 10.
Like you recommended, I recently moved the pickup closer to the strings...strangely enough haven't tried it out after doing that...hmmm

Now for the bass pickup and the GI-20, I didn't get that working well at all. Been a matter of yrs since I was experimenting with it..so it all a little vague now.
It's a 5 string bass pickup. I put it to my 5 string Steinberger. No way it would read the low B string at the 5th frett and lower. It just didn't work well as I remember.
They've pulled that PU since and replaced it with a 4 pole.

If you have any feedback on the picking thing I mentioned , pls comment.
Want to ask you about the pickup position that's best in relation to the bridge.
Is your PU built in or did you mount it..and how far from the bridge saddle is it.

Thanks in advance.

PS: I like the idea of listen to the analog guitar sound as reference rather then the tracked notes. Sound like a true winner for feedback. Have to do that.

[warza]

Hi Annode,

With regards to the picking issue with the downstrokes being at a different level from upstrokes with your Roland system, I have never experienced that.

I suspect the issue has to do with the just plain larger physics of a bass guitar. In fact, that's probably where all the issues you are having are coming from; sorry .

On the bass, the strings are of course thicker, and the pole pieces are farther apart. If your hex pickup is setup far away from the strings, this will cause the string sensitivity to fall off, as the pick pushes the strings further away from the pole pieces. Weird, I know.

The Roland hex pickup turns out to be amazingly sensitive, but it's also totally finicky to how it's setup. If you move it just a fraction of an inch closer or farther from the strings, it can totally change the response of how it plays. Or not......sometimes it seems to depend on if it's going to rain tomorrow.

Yes, I've noticed a big difference in how it responds depending on how close it is to the bridge. It's seems to be designed to be right up to, or even touching it, as opposed to the guitars lead pickup. Mine is the GK-2A that I installed myself. Also screws are better than sticky tape once you find a good position, because you don't want it shifting around at all. Having said that, when I recently installed it on my Warmoth I used some heavy duty double sided carpet tape, instead of screws (reason not being needed to be stated). Unlike the supplied Roland tape, the carpet stuff is a secure as a rock, and seems to be a perfect alternative.

I found this vid on You Tube of a guy who gets a lot of use out of his Roland system and has the GK-2A stuck IN BETWEEN his two guitar pickups. Interesting...he just plays with his fingernails too:




With the hex pickup being so close to the strings, you also have to be aware of possibly overloading the electronics with signal. I use very light strings on my Strat, and pick with a pretty light touch. Hey, we're going for precision here . Most of the strings are set to a sensitivity of 1 or 2 out of 8 (I think...). If you clip with too much signal, that will result in a mess. I also use a Roland VG-88 with the same system, it has an internal visual graph for setting up the string levels, and if you go over it just messes everything up horribly.

All that aside, I think you are running up against the wall of physics with a bass guitar. The frequencies are just too low, there's too many harmonics, and the dynamics are too wide to get something usable for sequencing out of a pitch to MIDI system. Sometimes on my guitar I throw a capo on the 5th fret, and it speeds the tracking way up.

Wouldn't it be nice if MIDI guitar players unlike keyboardists, didn't have to deal with all this stuff, and could just get on with playing? Maybe someday

[annode]

With regards to the picking issue with the downstrokes being at a different level from upstrokes with your Roland system, I have never experienced that.

I suspect the issue has to do with the just plain larger physics of a bass guitar. In fact, that's probably where all the issues you are having are coming from; sorry Sad.

This effect is with my 6 string.

[annode]

Thanks for the vid link...late now time for bed...have a look at it tomorrow.

Will also get to details on setting up my midi guitar tomorrow .

Like the capo idea too.

Any questions I asked were for the hex(6)pole PU and not the quad(4) pole.

Oh and BTW, I have piccolo bass strings I bought for my new Fender Mustang bass .
The idea there is just what you were saying about odd harmonics with low freq strings. The piccolo string are 1 octave above bass strings...so I expect will track faster and cleaner. All i'll need to do is midi-transpose in my DAW.

[warza]

Oh and BTW, I have piccolo bass strings I bought for my new Fender Mustang bass .
The idea there is just what you were saying about odd harmonics with low freq strings. The piccolo string are 1 octave above bass strings...so I expect will track faster and cleaner. All i'll need to do is midi-transpose in my DAW."

Sounds good, Annode. You should be able to get something useable out of that for sequencing. Just keep trying different approaches until it clicks.

[MRKiammi]

Guys could we please get ontopic again,
This is a yourockguitar thread, and you guys keep talking
About ztar,g10, Roland etc etc.
I am sure most of you really rather would like
One of those instead, but could you please
Talk about it in another thread, i dont
Know much about this, but right know
I only wanna hear about the yourock
Experiences, how to do settings, what people feel
Improvements etc etc. And since this is
An yourock thread, could we keep it to that please?
Could i perhaps ask the moderator
To remove All the inrelevant threads
In here, we have some good tips, and discussions, but they are
Drowning in All the other stuff.

[tapper mike]

That should be directed at me I'm stirring them in different directions.
It would be nice if we had a guitar controller forum.

I think we've covered about everything The YRG has to offer. I took the cover plate off it has these nubs over the strings. I don't advise others do that or.....wiggle the nubs. I find if I wiggle them I can get a fairly fast tremelo picking going. (although that doesn't work wht my D&G strings..

[polaris20]

Yes I am back up and running, and no, the YRG is not unstable in the slightest. It was just a perfect storm of fiddle fuckery that got me in a bind, and I would recommend folks sit tight and wait for more stable releases; they should work great, as well as being safer.

Tapper Mike, I've got some questions as far as how the YRG compares to the ZTar, but I will PM you, as this thread is about the YrG specifically.

[MRKiammi]

Yes I am back up and running, and no, the YRG is not unstable in the slightest. It was just a perfect storm of fiddle fuckery that got me in a bind, and I would recommend folks sit tight and wait for more stable releases; they should work great, as well as being safer.

Tapper Mike, I've got some questions as far as how the YRG compares to the , but I will PM you, as this thread is about the YrG specifically.

I Think a direct compare between yrg and other midi
Isnt oftopic; i would like to see a compare too, what dó you guys think? . But i dont deside that, i just thought that the thread was growing and growing with a lot of informations that didnt quite belong there

[MisterAcoustic]

I would think that comparisons between the YRG and other instruments would be acceptable in this thread.

It's the complete off-topic stuff that's a bit annoying.

For example, we've been talking about string picking sensitivity issues (that came to light like a day after I placed my YRG order). I'd still like to know how that compares to the yamaha ez-ag.

I didn't really mind the idea of buttons on the neck, but I thought string-like things would have a nicer feel. I have the means to deal with the yamaha's midi oddities. But all my thinking assumed that YRG would do at least as good a job at the right hand as yamaha did.

Did they? It sounds like the YRG may be significantly worse. I can't remember who has commented on the yamaha her (thanks by the way), but if you could talk about this issue specifically, I'd appreciate it.

[Markleford]

Anybody run this through MIDI-OX or other monitor yet to see if the YRG spits out any live SysEx data for fret-position *without* strumming?

- m

[Elantric]

I have been playing Dick Dale style high speed repetitve single notes all morning. Perfect tracking here. No " double notes ".

[polaris20]

I have been playing Dick Dale style high speed repetitve single notes all morning. Perfect tracking here. No " double notes ".

What do you have your string sensitivity set to?